After months of avoiding the Bretz book, I'm back to writing. It's a wonderful feeling - I just hope I can keep it going. I owe my recovery to John McPhee, at least in part. I've alsways known the only way out of writer's block is to write, write, write. But try as I might, I wasn't able to get the first words to stick to the paper. Then I read McPhees Draft 4, which has a wonderful section containing the cure. Here's a segment from the the several pages I worked on before I was sure I could actually sustain a drive on the book itself:
DEAR MOTHER…
Things are not going so well. A few years back I began working on a book project. It’s about a “rebel geologist” by the name of J Harlen Bretz. He was one of the most controversial geologists of the 20th Century, and also one of the most consequential. I’ll get into all that directly, but right now the conversation is all about me and my failing book project.
Like I said things are not going so well. I’m suffering from a bad case of writer’s block. Actually, it’s the book project that’s suffering – I’m doing great otherwise; retired and loving it; home life all hunky dory; family members all hearty and hale; and since writing is more or less an avocation, it’s not like this block thing is going to take food off the table or wreck my career. So, don’t worry, I’ll be ok.
Still, it’s an awful thing to sit here at this computer, hour after hour, day after day, and have absolutely nothing to show for it beyond a few paragraphs of the SOS – sometimes not even that. Kind of puts a cloud over all the bright spots in my day. On more than one occasion I’ve come very close to simply calling it quits for keeps, especially in the last few days; and it may very well still come to that, if I can’t find a way to write myself out of this hole. If nothing else, I’d sure like to get far enough along with the manuscrapt that I can bear to share it with the folks who helped me out with so much of the research.
When I first began working on the project, I reached out for help in every direction I could think of, oftentimes to complete strangers. Many of these folks are at the top of their fields, and all of them are incredibly busy. For all of that, their responses to the project were overwhelmingly positive. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my pretty face and sparkling personality that opened their hearts and file cabinets. The Bretz name provided the necessary cachet – that and the idea I might be able to provide some valuable insights into his character and his legacy. I can’t help but feel deeply indebted to them.
“Writer’s block” is something I guess every writer, good or bad, deals with from time to time. The “literature” on writer’s block is immense – Google that phrase and you’ll get almost 30 million hits! All kinds of writers have written about it – scholars, psychologists, novelists, essayists, journalists, etc. – and their perspectives vary all over the place. There are even writers who insist it isn’t a “condition” at all:
Writer’s block is a myth…(it’s) fake. No one knows when or how the idea came into the world…It’s a lie, something we tell ourselves to avoid the work…Writer’s block is fear, layers and layers of fear. We don’t want to fail. Afraid to ship our art. The latest project is garbage and not worth our time and effort. Fear is not writer’s block…Writer’s block is about fear and our perfectionist tendencies. (https://writingcooperative.com/writers-block-is-a-myth-and-4-things-to-consider-when-staring-at-the-blank-page-764b5994a80e)
My guess is the condition varies somewhat from individual to individual, and maybe even project to project. And while “fear and our perfectionist tendencies” might explain blockage in some cases, they can’t explain them all.
One of the most common suggestions for overcoming blockage, whatever the root cause, is to write (or talk) your way out of it. Thinking along these lines, John McPhee, one of my favorite non-fiction authors offers this advice:
You are writing, say, about a grizzly bear…For six, seven, ten hours, no words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been going. What do you do? You write, “Dear Mother.” And then you tell your mother about the block, the frustration, the ineptitude. You whine. You whimper. You outline your problem, and you mention that the bear has a fifty-five inch waist and a neck more than thirty inches around but could run nose to nose with Secretariat. You say the bear prefers to lie down and rest. The bear rests fourteen hours a day. And you go on like that for as long as you can. And then you go back and delete the “Dear Mother” and all the whimpering and whining, and just keep the bear. (McPhee, Draft 4)
I’m writing about a famous geologist, not a bear, but the idea of coming to you with my whimpering and whining makes a lot of sense. God knows I’ve done it often enough in the past. So, dear mother, in the pages to follow I will be pouring out my angst, as well as filling you in on the probable details of my book, in the hope that somehow the process – and your sage words of wisdom – will help me dig out of what has become a horrible hole.
Thanks in advance for being there.
Your loving son, etc….
(My mom passed away 16 years ago today; but I felt wonderfully reconnected with her as I wrote the lines above. We were extremely close. She'd have liked this letter - and this idea - and would have had a great deal to say in response. Whatever she said, and no matter how I responded, we'd have argued about it, maybe even angrily...but later on, we'd have made up. Sometimes that's just the way it is, when you love someone so much, but don't quite know how to handle it.)